


Driftwood, Vol. IV

by jenny_of_oldstones



Series: Driftwood [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Gay Sex, Gen, M/M, One Shot Collection, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:42:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28518828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Miscellaneous prompts, fills, and other assorted Dragon Age vignettes for 2021.Mostly Dorian/Trevelyan and Male Hawke/Fenris, with other characters tossed in the mix.
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/Male Trevelyan, Fenris/Male Hawke, Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Series: Driftwood [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720261
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. Nose (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Herald gets one of his most flattering features amputated.

"You'll lose your nose."

Dorian looked up from the campfire in front of which he was shivering. The Herald was climbing the icy steps from Flissa's tavern, as comfortable in the freezing wind as he was on a tropical beach. 

"And your ears, and your fingers, and your toes, and most of the skin on your face." Trevelyan placed himself in the path of the wind. "Didn't your mother ever warn you about frostbite?" 

"My mother taught me to never take beer before brandy, thank you very much," said Dorian. "And _civilized_ countries don't have frostbite."

"I take it the Fereldan winter isn't treating you well?" 

"You people," said Dorian, enunciating every word. "Are insane."

"And to think it's only Haring. In all seriousness, you shouldn't loiter outside on a day like this. Not unless you know a proper heat spell."

"I'm more than familiar with Lucretia's Convection."

Trevelyan raised an eyebrow.

Dorian sighed. "Very well. I've been having difficulty keeping warm."

To put it mildly. Dorian had learned magic in the humidity of Qarinas, where the sea was warm as blood and the sun hot year round. "Winter" was the season when you put on a light shawl after sundown, or maybe a closed-toed pair of slippers. If for whatever reason he found himself chilly back home, a simple flick, and an envelope of heat would seal over his skin.

The amount of mana he would need to keep warm in this weather, on the other hand, was ridiculous. Dorian wore himself out flicking useless, lukewarm heat spells over his skin, each one lasting about as long as a fart before it was slashed apart by the wind. Any attempt to pour more mana into the spell resulted in scorching his flesh, or else a disturbing prickling beneath the epidermis that he suspected was nerve endings cooking. 

The solution was obvious. All he needed to do was ask one of the southern mages how to perform a proper heat spell-- the kind children learned during their first year in the Circle. 

Naturally, he'd rather freeze to death. Or wait for helpful Heralds to take pity.

"Let me guess, you keep burning your skin?" asked Trevelyan.

"Yes," said Dorian. "I take it you have a suggestion?"

Trevelyan gave a lazy flick of his wrist.

And instantly the wind and cold vanished. The change was so swift as to be startling.

"How did you...." Dorian ran his hands over the ward. It was identical to the heat spells he had been casting, but tougher.

"A ward within a ward," said Trevelyan. "The heat is kept inside a semi-permeable membrane charged with a convective current." 

"Well, aren't you clever." 

"It's worth taking to heart. It might very well save your life one day." 

The advice was concerned enough to make Dorian appreciate, not for the first time, the man in front of him. The Herald was handsome, with kind eyes and an aquiline nose. It was the kind of profile Dorian would have loved to trace his finger down.

"So, my dear Herald, was there another matter you wished to discuss, other than keeping me warm?" Dorian asked.

"There was, actually. The other mages and I are heading to the Temple of Sacred Ashes tomorrow to do a dry run on the Breach. I saved you a spot in the caravan, since you wanted to have a closer look at it."

"How kind of you to remember. Keep making promises and people will think I'm your favorite." 

That earned him a smile. There was a little wrinkle in the bridge of Trevelyan's nose that was unfairly kissable.

"I'll see you tomorrow," said Trevelyan. "Just remember, if things go south: I'm here. I'll protect you _."_

 _Damn him._ Trevelyan sauntered down the icy steps, leaving Dorian to wonder what that handsome face would feel like pressed against his own. 

* * *

And, of course, things went south. 

Not in any way Trevelyan could have predicted. Not even the Herald could have foreseen an ancient magister falling out of the sky with an archdemon and an army of glowing red lyrium Templars.

Or that he would sacrifice himself to buy their sad little village time to escape.

Dorian half-carried, half-dragged a wounded Inquisition scout up the mountain pass. The wind shrieked in his ears, the snow like knives as it slapped against his face. He had thought he understood cold, but this was something else. 

One step....another.....one step....another.....

If he could just focus on moving his legs, if he could just stamp his boots hard enough to force the numbness in his toes to recede...

The lips of the scout on his shoulder were blue. They were both going to freeze to death.

Dorian tried to remember the heat spell as Trevelyan had demonstrated it. He envisioned the membrane in his mind, then flicked his wrist-

Warmth settled over him like a blanket.

"Aha!" he said to the unconscious scout. "Wait til I tell-" 

A rumbling shook the ground. The ragged procession stopped and turned. The last fires of Haven plunged into darkness as the entire mountainside slid over it.

"He did it," said Cullen, beside him. 

Dorian said nothing. He flooded the membrane with more mana, then pushed on through the blizzard, one step, then another, then another. 

* * *

When they finally made camp, Dorian deposited the unconscious scout in the medical tent and collapsed onto a pile of saddle blankets.

He thought about Trevelyan buried under thousands of tons of rock and ice.

Dorian had chatted with him only a few hours before. They had been at the victory feast following the sealing of the Breach. Trevelyan had been handsome in the firelight, and Dorian had been working up the courage to ask him back to his bunk.

And then the bells had rung.

Dorian wondered if he would hear those bells in his dreams for the rest of his days. They were the sound that signaled the end of Trevelyan's life, and the doom of all beautiful possibilities. 

He woke later that night to shouting and pounding feet.

Dorian sat up in time to see Cullen and Cassandra rush past with a limp figure shouldered between them. A weeping and praying crowd followed them and crowded around the healer's tent.

"What's going on?" he called out to a serving woman.

"It's him," she said. "It's _him_."

Dorian scrambled to his feet and pushed his way through the crowd. His heart was pounding as if he had just woken from a nightmare. In a moment he'd see Trevelyan's face again and all hope for the Inquisition would be restored.

Dorian pushed through the tent flaps, past the healers, to where Trevelyan lay on a cot.

Then he retched. 

* * *

The first official business Josephine did for the Inquisitor was commission him a nose.

The final product was a wedge of gray nickel secured to Trevelyan's face by two leather straps that wrapped around his ears. It stood out starkly against the frostbite-ravaged flesh of his face.

Trevelyan fiddled with it constantly. 

"I sound like my head's in a chamber pot," said Trevelyan in the library one afternoon. He adjusted the strap on the stump of his left ear again. "You should see the mucus this thing fills up with."

"I most certainly should not." Dorian licked a finger and turned the page of his book. 

"It drives me _crazy_ ," said Trevelyan. "I keep wanting to yank it off while I'm talking to the nobles, but Josephine wants me to keep it on."

 _Small mercies,_ thought Dorian. There had been more than a few gasps when Trevelyan first emerged from the medical tent after the surgeon removed the blackened flesh from his face. The metal nose was an improvement over the gaping hole beneath it, but it was hard to forget what it hid. 

"Dorian," said Trevelyan.

"Hm?" 

"You're not looking at me," said Trevelyan. 

"Of course not, you're disrupting my reading," said Dorian. "Rude of you." 

The truth was that Dorian didn't want to lift his head, because Trevelyan's mutilated face made him ill. Gone now was the handsome stranger in Haven, replaced by a gargoyle with a metal snout. 

It was cruel, beyond the pale of weak-minded, but it was how he felt. 

Trevelyan no doubt sensed it. Most people found reasons to avert their gazes now. 

"Fine," said Trevelyan. "I'll go bother Solas, then."

He pushed back from the table and took his lanky self downstairs. 

* * *

Trevelyan eventually became fed up with the prosthetic nose. 

He still wore it at court and around the troops, but in private he took it off as soon as he could. He would sit down at the Chargers' table in Herald's Rest and rip it off with a grimace, scratching at the imprints the straps left on his cheeks. His companions were uncomfortable at first, but they adjusted to it. 

Most of them.

Dorian still found himself repulsed by it. Trevelyan would come visit him in the rotunda, and, halfway through a conversation about magic, lift the nose to massage his face. Dorian would find himself suddenly engrossed in his work, and Trevelyan would accept the dismissal without comment.

It was during one such forced conversation that Trevelyan handed him a letter.

"It's about your father," said Trevelyan. 

Trevelyan kept his nose off the entire ride to Redcliffe. He claimed that his ears hurt, and Dorian couldn't object. The man was, after all, doing him a favor.

Things went south. Again. 

Halward Pavus flinched at the Inquisitor's appearance, but otherwise was the soul of civility to Trevelyan.

To Dorian, he made every excuse, twisted all of his words, and managed to make Dorian feel guilty for being angry. Trevelyan said little during the exchange but stood protectively between Dorian and his father.

After that....unpleasantness, they rode back to Skyhold. Trevelyan was kind enough not to force conversation. He gave Dorian space after they returned, and only checked on him the next day in the library. Dorian stared out at the rain, wondering if his father was already Tevinter-bound or still at the inn in Redcliffe. 

"He tried to change you?" asked Trevelyan. He wasn't wearing his nose, and his voice sounded even more congested than usual. "What exactly was all that about?" 

"He was going to do a blood ritual. Alter my mind. Make me...acceptable," said Dorian. "I found out. I left. Selfish, I suppose, not to want to spend the rest of my life screaming on the inside." 

"You're not selfish," said Trevelyan. 

"You're certainly the first to say so," said Dorian. "Maker, I can't imagine what you think of me after all this. I apologize. I never wanted to burden you with my problems." 

"I don't think less of you," said Trevelyan. "More, if possible." 

Dorian's heart ached. "The things you say...." 

"I mean it," said Trevelyan.

"My father never understood. Living a lie...." said Dorian. "It festers inside you. Like a poison. You have to fight for what's in your heart."

"I agree," said Trevelyan, and leaned in.

Dorian recoiled. The moist, gaping hole in the middle of Trevelyan's face yawned before him, its septum glistening red. He turned abruptly back to the window, but not before he saw the hurt in Trevelyan's eyes. 

"I guess...let me know if you need anything," said Trevelyan. 

"Of course, Inquisitor," said Dorian, hating himself. He heard a rustling, and in the reflection of the window watched Trevelyan fish his nose out of his pocket and strap it back on his face.

* * *

It was cold in the Emprise du Lion.

Dorian wiped frozen snot from his upper lip. Trevelyan stood on a hill, peering through a spyglass at three colosseums across a wide chasm.

They hadn't spoken much since Redcliffe. Dorian had lain awake nearly every night, torn between disgust and his aching heart. How was one supposed to kiss a man without a nose anyway? Did you simply turn your head forty-five degrees and hope for the best? What if he brushed the moist edge? What if his mustache hairs went inside Trevelyan's nasal passage?

The Inquisitor claimed he was brave, but was he brave enough to wake up every morning to a face like that?

" _Hmph_. Just go for it."

Dorian startled. The Iron Bull stood behind him, his nipples like arrowheads.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Dorian. 

"You're hard for him. So what's holding you back?" asked Bull. "It's the nose, right?"

Dorian was no longer surprised when their big, brutish Qunari proved to be disturbingly observant. "It just....sickens me. I can't help it."

"Then say so," said Bull. "Tell the Boss you think his face is gross and move on."

"Are you mad?" said Dorian.

"You just said that you don't want to touch him, so what's the problem?"

Dorian opened his mouth, then closed it. The problem was that, no matter his feelings on the nose, the thought of hurting Trevelyan sickened him worse.

"Some things you can get over," said Bull, scratching under his eyepatch. "Some things you can't. Figure it out or admit you're beat."

"Pah! Me? Defeated? I'm afraid your powers of observation are beginning to rust."

Bull snorted.

It did give Dorian something to consider. The next morning, he sat at the campfire with his tin cup of hot coffee, mulling over his choice. If losing Trevelyan was worse than the horror of his mutilation, then wasn't the path forward clear? 

“Has anyone seen my sniffer?” Trevelyan yelled, stumbling out of his tent without his prosthetic.

“I've got it!” Sera shouted from across the camp, then shoved down her leggings and stuck the metal nose between her arsecheeks. “Sniff this, Herald!”

Trevelyan tackled her and pressed his nose hole against her cheek. Sera shrieked and kicked at him with her naked legs, giving Dorian a flash of her bush. Bull, hearing the screaming, chose to stand up in the middle of his tent instead of crawling out of it. He ran at the two of them covered in a tarp like a ghost, bellowing with an axe in his hand. It took the sound of Sera's high-pitched laughter to halt his charge.

Trevelyan glanced across at Dorian, his mutilated, cold-scarred face wrinkling as if to say, _these fucking assholes._

Yes, Dorian decided. The path was clear.

* * *

"I don't know if you're aware," said Dorian, as Mother Giselle retreated down the stairs of the rotunda. "But the rumor is that you and I are....intimate."

"That's not the worst thing that could happen, is it?" asked Trevelyan. 

"I don't know," said Dorian. "Is it?"

"Do you always answer a question with a question?"

"Would you prefer I answer in some other fashion?"

Trevelyan chuckled. "If you're capable."

Dorian hesitated. He had approached this moment a hundred times in his mind and still lacked a graceful way to proceed.

Trevelyan's smile faded. "It truly repulses you, doesn't it?" 

It did. The slits where Trevelyan’s nose used to be were moist all the time, and Dorian could see inside him, which was never not disturbing. The hole held a smell of infection, and dried blood, and sometimes the sinus had to be drained with a needle.

But it was still the face of the man who had warmed him that day in Haven. 

“I’m just trying to figure out how to kiss you, you ghoul," said Dorian. 

Trevelyan’s scarred flesh tugged into a smile. He tilted his head and offered his neck.

Dorian pressed his lips to it. He nuzzled his way to Trevelyan's ear, then covered the place where his nose used to be with a hand and kissed him.

It was nice to know he could still learn a new trick.


	2. A Request (Fiona)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enchanter Fiona makes a small request of Trevelyan.

“May I have a word?”

Fiona startled. The Herald had crept up behind her. The two enchanters beside her who had been studying a map of the Breach raised their eyebrows.

“Of course, Herald. I hope there is no trouble?” she asked.

Trevelyan walked away without answering, heading in the direction of the forest.

“Do you want one of us to go with you?” asked Enchanter Balast.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Fiona. “Please, continue.”

She pulled up her hood and followed Trevelyan around the tents and cookfires to the line of pine trees that surrounded the mage camp. He led her past the latrines and trash pits where the waste of the camp smoldered. She was beginning to sweat, when Trevelyan halted beside a frozen stream.

“How goes the planning?” he asked.

“Well,” she said. “With any luck, we’ll be ready for our first practice run within a few days.”

“Do you need anything?”

“We could always use more lyrium, but I believe we will manage. Thank you for the books you delivered. Quayle’s Theorum on Energy Distribution Along the Veil would be difficult to come by in the best of times. ”

Trevelyan said nothing to that. He was a man of few words and, she suspected, enjoyed intimidation.

“You and I have not had a chance to speak privately since you arrived,” said Trevelyan.

That was true. Their encounters had all been group briefings concerning the problem of relocating hundreds of mages from Redcliffe to Haven or the even more gargantuan problem of sealing the Breach. Fiona was always on the move, as was Trevelyan.

“I want this alliance to work,” said Trevelyan.

“As do I,” said Fiona.

“The Breach is a threat to everyone,” said Trevelyan. “There is no higher priority than sealing it. But what will happen to the mages afterward?”

Fiona had lain awake many nights asking herself the same question. There had been no choice but to accept the Inquisition's offer of an alliance. Queen Anora had been the rebellion's sole friend among the nobility, but Fiona's desperation had spoiled that. The Inquisition had swooped in and saved them.

That didn’t mean she had illusions. The Inquisition, no matter what it claimed, was a Chantry organization. Its goal was to seal the rifts, find the Divine’s killer, and restore order to the world. That word, “order,” sent chills down her spine.

The world wanted to return to normal. That meant forcing the mages back into their cages, no matter what was promised in the short-term. It struck her as inevitable. 

The only thing that gave her pause was Trevelyan.

His colleagues had been furious with him when he allied the Inquisition with the rebellion. They would have been well within their rights to overrule him. But they hadn’t. They had allowed this apostate in his ratty cloak and scarred face to potentially ruin their organization’s reputation. They had not made him Tranquil, or shackled him, or forced him under Templar watch. Trevelyan commanded their respect, and he made sure the rebel mages were given the same respect.

“I think….” said Fiona. “Whatever happens will be up to you.”

“I’m not the leader of the Inquisition.”

“From what I’ve seen, you might as well be.”

He frowned, a little wrinkle forming between his brows. If she didn't know any better, the idea troubled him. 

“Regardless,” he said. “What I desire is not what everyone desires.”

“No,” she agreed. “Many will encourage you to betray us. Or at the very least to limit our freedoms.”

“Some already have,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to speak with you.”

He pulled a small scroll from his pocket and handed it to her. As soon as she touched the parchment, Fiona felt a vibration of magic through her gloves.

“Acidic parchment?” she said.

“It will dissolve in a few hours." 

Fiona broke the seal on the scroll and scanned it.

“Are you trying to warn me of something?” she asked.

“I don’t know what will happen in the future,” said Trevelyan. “But I don’t trust mundanes. I’d rather we be prepared.”

 _We_. Fiona rolled up the scroll. “I take it your colleagues are unaware of these contingency plans.”

“That’s correct,” he said. “The Breach must be sealed, and the rifts. But the rebellion must survive no matter what. If we have to run, we run. If we have to fight, we fight. Resistance is all that matters.”

Years ago, Fiona might have been stirred by his words. Now, she simply felt tired.

“I will keep these in mind,” said Fiona. “Thank you for your support, Herald.”

Trevelyan returned his attention to the frozen stream. The tails of his duster were full of holes, some of them from sword points. It seemed to her an incredible stroke of luck that the Herald of Andraste was a mage who despised the Chantry. Had anyone else stumbled out of the Fade that fateful day, the rebels might not have fared as well as they had.

She was about to leave, when a thought gave her pause.

The scroll in her pocket was a list of contingencies. Plans to be made in the event that the Inquisition reneged on its alliance. It covered everything from escape routes out of Haven to hiding places in the mountains.

The one thing it did not cover was what would happen if they were forced back into the Circle.

It seemed far-fetched at the moment, but if there was one thing Fiona had learned, it was that a new rock bottom could always be found. The rebel mages were tired. Thedas was tired. It was only a matter of time before the rebellion collapsed, and the cycle of captivity began again. 

The idea of returning to the Circle wearied her to her core. She was not sure she would survive it. Either the Templars would execute her, or the Loyalists would put a brand to her forehead. 

Unless.

Fiona studied the apostate before her. He had a murky past, but she had gleaned a few things about him. Most intriguingly, that he had escaped from the Circle. Specifically, from the Black Tower. 

“May I ask you something?’ she said.

"Go ahead," he said.

“You have made it clear that you support the rebellion,” she said. “A man willing to fight for his fellow mage. But it strikes me as odd that, from what I have heard, you have rebuffed those in our camp who have approached you in the hope that you would teach them your gift." 

Trevelyan said nothing.

“You can shapeshift,” she said. “It is....unexpected.”

"Unexpected" was an understatement. Shapeshifting was a dead school of magic. Few mages in all of Thedas could claim to have the gift, and the few that did lived on the margins of civilization.

“The Templars have never learned how to counter shapeshifters. If we were forced back into the Circle-”

“No,” said Trevelyan.

Fiona was taken aback. “Why not?” 

“It’s not a spell you learn overnight,” he said. “It takes years of study.”

“I'm not asking you to give a symposium. If you were to diagram the spell—”

“No,” he said.

“It would only be shared with the most senior of enchanters. Once they mastered it, they could teach it to those they believed skilled enough to learn it.”

“You were told no, Grand Enchanter. Do not ask again.”

Fiona’s face went hot. This man, whose marked hand granted him diplomatic protection—how dare he deny them this?

“You claim to care about the future of mages, and yet you won’t give your fellow mages a way to escape the Templars?” she asked.

Trevelyan did not turn his head.

“The Mage Collective claims that knowledge should be shared freely,” she said. “Nothing destroyed, forbidden, or hidden. Is this how one of their agents behaves?”

“The Mage Collective made the same request,” he said. “I also told them no, and they were far less forgiving than you. My decision has nothing to do with them.”

“Do you truly not see the hypocrisy of your actions?” she said. “To turn into a bird at will….it must have saved your life countless times. If I had such a spell at my disposal, I would scream it from the mountaintops.”

Trevelyan said nothing.

“I suppose I should not be surprised,” she said. “After all, you alone escaped the Black Tower. It’s not as if you bothered to save anyone else." Fiona shoved the scroll into her pocket. “Thank you again, Herald.”

She started to walk back to camp, then halted. Trevelyan stood alone beside the frozen stream, as solemn as a dead tree.

“I cannot claim to understand your life,” she said. “But you don’t have many friends, do you?"

He met her gaze.

"We live in a terrible world, one that forces many of us to walk alone," she said. "But I hope one day you realize that there is strength in unity.”

She might as well have been lecturing a stone. Folding her hands inside her sleeves, she headed back to camp. A crow cawed at her from a branch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A different version of this fic was originally going to be in "Corvidae," but I wasn't happy with it and deleted it. 
> 
> Jack learned how to shapeshift into a crow at a young age. During his time with the Inquisition, a lot of mages asked him to teach them. He declined them all. 
> 
> His reasons were complicated. There were practical concerns (it takes years to learn), political concerns (what if my enemies use it against me) and selfish concerns (learning how to be a bird was weird and traumatic and I don't want to talk about it!!!) 
> 
> In any case, I just couldn't pull it together into a narrative. "Corvidae" has become something else, so this little scene with Fiona will rest in the graveyard of "Driftwood" with all the other misfit one-shots. 
> 
> It would have been fun to write the scene I had planned where Dorian tried various means to persuade Trevelyan to teach him shapeshifting, but alas. It was not meant to be. 
> 
> My head canon is that later in life (assuming Solas doesn't kill him in the next game), Trevelyan takes on a few students in his dotage and teaches them the spell. They then go on to found a shapeshifting department at the College of Enchanters.


End file.
